Kim Jong Un Tries To Pull A Saddam Hussein On Sanctions

After the Gulf War, some pretty strict sanctions were placed on Iraq and the former Dictator, Saddam Hussein, claimed that these sanctions resulted in one and a half million deaths, many of them children.

The numbers can obviously be disputed but aside from that pressure from Saddam’s call as well as propaganda initiated by the Iraq government in a sense turned the table, internationally, and put the eyes of the world on the so-called “wrongdoing” of America.

And now, it seems, North Korean Dictator Kim Jong Un is taking a page from the Saddam playbook.

The point being that while the sanctions are not perfect and there is major leakage, particularly by Russian and China, the North Korean ruling class is beginning to feel the pinch and Kim Jong Un cannot survive if the ruling clique stop believing he can deliver the goods for them.

North Korea called on Friday for a halt to what it called “brutal sanctions”, saying the measures – imposed after its latest nuclear test – constituted genocide.

“Today the U.S.-led racket of brutal sanctions and pressure against the DPRK constitutes contemporary human rights violation and genocide,” the North Korean mission to the United Nations in Geneva said in a statement.

The sanctions regime “threatens and impedes the enjoyment by the people of DPRK of their human rights in all sectors”, it said.

North Korea is on the leading edge of a severe famine brought on by crop failure. As the famine worsens you can bet your bottom dollar that we will be told we are very bad people. The pressure will build to relax sanctions in order to relieve the suffering of ordinary North Koreans when we all know relaxation of sanctions will benefit the North Korea ruling clique and the military. The Trump administration needs to hold firm and to turn the screws on North Korea and force it to either agree to denuclearization or face social collapse and perhaps war.